


no glue

by ephemeral_fallacy



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Dreams, M/M, Memories, NOT FUCKING CANON OKAY, Nostalgia, ahh fuck, hide being depressed, holy shit, i dont wanna write angst, i hate my writing, no sunshine, puzzle symbolism, slight au?, wtf is this shit lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeral_fallacy/pseuds/ephemeral_fallacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of death and death lingers in his eyes. Hide wants to find that reason to smile again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no glue

**Author's Note:**

> holy shit, this is un-beta'd again.  
> does anyone wanna be my beta?????????help
> 
> nOT CANON NOT CANON HIDE IS NOT LIK E THIS MAYBE KANEKI IS ALIVE  
> i dont own tokyo ghoul..

 

Hide spends most of his time staring.

Staring at cars speeding by, staring at the majestic skyscrapers that mingle among the clouds, staring out of windows, staring at places he can only wish to be. He’s just not as vibrant as he used to be. Some people say it’s because of the loss of his arm, but he knows better. He knows himself more than anyone else does.

His left arm remains by his side, almost nothing left except for a shoulder and a rounded stump. Sometimes he still feels it and he feels like it’s moving, but it’s tingly and ghost-like. It’s not there anymore, and Hide knows that.

Phantom limb syndrome. He’s looked it up.

But there’s something he can’t look up. He can’t find the answer in a snap, just like that. There’s a mystery he still has yet to solve.

_I still can’t find him._

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, Hide dreams.

Although, one can hardly call them dreams; he seldom dreams now.

His dreams are all twisted nightmares, mazes in which he can’t find his way out and he’s left shuddering and sweating, panting with fear and his eyes glazed, clutching at the arm that isn’t there anymore. He dreams about Kaneki, he dreams about ghouls, he dreams about the ways he could’ve died and yet, hasn’t.

Once, he dreamt of white-haired Kaneki, whispering in his ear. He called him despicable, for not being able to save him from his torture. He called him a coward, for not killing himself. He called him trash, for not being able to understand. He was tied down, lashed at, and the only thing he could do was scream that he was sorry and that he should’ve died. That he would rather have died in Kaneki’s arms than anywhere else.

But, that time, he woke up. He woke up to sweaty bedsheets and tear-streaked cheeks. He woke up to a cold room and the red alarm numbers of five o’clock and the color of stormy gray eyes in the sky.

He has recurring thoughts afterwards.

Hide sometimes wonders if he’s just in a nightmare that he can’t wake up from; that one day, he’ll jerk away and Kaneki will be there, black hair and beautiful gray eyes. Waiting for him, so patiently. He’ll be in a hospital room, maybe, IVs in his arm and a heart monitor beeping away in the white snow background. It’ll be winter, Kaneki will have a scarf draped on a chair and an almost apologetic blush in the center of his cheeks.

Kaneki _will_ smile.

His storm cloud eyes will finally soften and he will smile like any boy, like any human, and he will tear up and grab his hand and whisper into his fingers that _he’s so happy Hide’s back._

And Hide will laugh and tell him, “ _I was definitely going to come back, you’re still here!_ ”

It’s too bad he’s no longer here.  
Hide really doesn’t have a reason to _be here_ , then.

 

* * *

 

He feels useless.

He’s quit soccer, and he’s basically quit college. He has never quite attended as often as he should’ve, and there’s really no reason not to go. His right hand is still intact and it’s just a little troublesome, but he can’t find the heart in him to get up.

Hide lies in bed, his eyes roaming his ceiling. There are indents in the ceiling, juts and lumps that are almost like constellations, but it’s a sickly, off-white color. Hide plays connect-the-dots with them, and ends up with nothing, like always.

_Things don’t fit together well anymore._

“Glue is useless,” he says out loud and shrinks, as if scared of someone reprimanding him. He wishes someone was there to tell him he was wrong, to tell him that he needs to get his ass into gear and rev the engine again. He needs to be told that he’s, really, just a waste of space. Because those words would help him. He would work his way back up, to not be garbage, to not be _useless_.

But in his small, cold home, there’s nothing but mismatched ceilings and dark corridors. There’s no warmth when he wakes up and when he falls asleep; he hardly smiles and he finds it hard to, as if the muscles in his face are too weak to even try.

He feels like his life is a puzzle with missing pieces.

 

* * *

 

No one comments about his missing arm, and Hide is so glad they don’t.

He sees them staring, sometimes, at the armless sleeve that hands by his side like an inanimate doll. The wind stirs it up and occasionally, he gets slapped in the face by it if the wind is strong enough. People burst into a laugh, but kill it quickly and with guilty expressions. At least they have some sense.

Bullies do tease him, but before it gets any worse than a little bit of punching, Hide stands up for himself.

In those moments, it doesn’t feel like he’s himself. It’s almost like he’s staring desperately into the eyes of his best friend, staring death down, unafraid. He’s been close to death, close to bleeding out, and he didn’t even care, back then. He was so happy, to finally see Kaneki, to _finally help him…_

The bullies always comment on his eyes, afterward.

Rumors circulate, and maybe that’s also why Hide never really goes to college anymore.

 

_“That Hide kid? His eyes can literally split you open!”_   
_“When he looked at me, it felt like he was strangling me, honest!”_   
_“It’s like he’s seen the worst, like he’s seen hell and come back.”_

 

* * *

 

When Hide finally finds the motivation to step outside, it’s a pretty day.

Grayish-white clouds cover the skies thinly, and just a transparent blue is barely visible. He likes it that way, hopes it’ll stay like that forever so that he can go outside. Sunlight doesn’t seem to fit him anymore. He wears a white shirt, simple, and pulls a jacket haphazardly over it. His headphones are broken, they’ve broken a while ago and he hasn’t had the time to buy a new pair. It’s not like he wants to listen to anything anymore.

Hide trudges along, watching aimlessly as people pass by him, walking ten times faster. Sometimes, people glance at him and their eyes linger. Is he too slow? Is it the arm? His head fills with questions, but he pays them no mind.

A coffee shop lingers in his mind.

He can’t quite name it, but he feels his feet know the way. And he doesn’t mind letting them lead. He already feels tired and it hasn’t been that long.

The people all look the same, and the trees do too. The road is an endless swirl of gray and the sky spirals to meet the ground in an elaborate scheme to fell his strength. But it’s working. He has yet to find something that awakens him; his eyes feel like they’re misted over with an eternally warm fog.

In his periphery, he spots something familiar. Perhaps his feet really have led him well.

It looks the same as it did, years ago. _Anteiku._

The staff are different, there’s no girl with one eye covered, she was cute. Her name was Touka, he supposes, and it drifts from his mind easily.

He sits down, the scent of coffee beans and warmth filling his nose, memories resurfacing with every second he spends in there. It just makes him want to go home, go back to the void where he doesn’t have to think, he just is.

So he stands up, the waitress hasn’t even come yet and some customers are staring at him. When he turns, the doorbell tinkles in that familiar way, but his heart starts to pound, not so much for the bell, but for the person who walks through.

_He looks so much like Kaneki…_

But he has greyish hair, the top more black; it almost looks dyed, but Hide knows it’s not. He’s wearing a CCG coat, but he acts as if Anteiku is home.

Instinctively, he reaches out once he's close. His mind is whispering, _Kaneki_ , but his voice says, “Excuse me?”

The male turns around and the face looks almost identical.

“Ah, who are you?” His familiar gray eyes are blank and mindlessly happy; it pains Hide, and yet, he should be happy.

 

_He should be happy that he’s happy._

 

“It’s..nothing, sorry! I thought you were someone else!” He covers it up with a bright laugh and waves it away with his only hand. The Kaneki-look alike in front of him stares at the useless sleeve dangling by his side, but quickly wrenches it away, color slightly flooding in his cheeks. Hide can’t help but notice it starts in the middle of his cheek, just like how Kaneki blushes.

“See you, then…” Hide murmurs and he turns around, unsure of whether or not his head should be held high.

 

But he feels eyes staring at his back, and he wonders if he could’ve remembered,  
if he could’ve re-sown the seeds he once had,  
 _if he could’ve made it all better and fixed his broken puzzle._

**Author's Note:**

> //dead  
> OTL
> 
> um i know anteiku is prolly no longer there, pls excuse for headcanon usage, thank ; u ;


End file.
